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Ballard Village Winery, a boutique family-run Central Coast winery, had no established brand identity and an outdated wine label. While working with a team, I developed a comprehensive brand refresh including a logo and a non-traditional wine label, where instead of using paper substrates, we screen-printed directly onto the bottle using 24-karat gold ink, creating a luxurious, tactile experience while staying compliant with TTB regulations.
1. Problem & How Might We Statement
Ballard Village Winery had no established brand identity or digital presence. With over 6,000 wineries competing in California's market, they needed a cohesive brand foundation and wine bottle labels for their 2024 Syrah that could communicate elegance, class, and family tradition to illustrate the winery as a premium boutique brand in the competitive Los Olivos AVA.
HOW MIGHT WE help a family-run winery establish their brand through a premium wine label that communicates elegance and tradition to differentiate themselves on the shelf in one of California's most saturated wine markets?
2. Crafting The Mood Board
After meeting with Ballard's founders, Bill Perry and Becky Crane, I had a clear picture of the direction they envisioned for their 2024 Syrah. They emphasized a sophisticated, elegant, and timeless aesthetic with earthy tones, a minimalist label with no grape motifs, and a back label omitting any flavor descriptors to avoid influencing the drinker's experience, a detail Bill was particularly passionate about.
With these priorities in mind, I began crafting a moodboard that captured what I interpreted the visual language of the brand to be: refined typography, muted and earthy color palettes, and references to premium wine packaging that balanced flowy movement with luxury. The moodboard also guided decisions around Ballard's broader brand identity, ensuring the logo or wordmark, typefaces, and overall aesthetic could extend consistently across future wine varietals and set them apart from competitors.
3. Finalizing the Logo
After exploring various directions, we landed on a logo centered around a serif capital "B" monogram, which best captured the sophisticated and timeless tone Bill and Becky envisioned for their brand. The serif letterform inherently carries a sense of refinement and tradition, while a fluid stroke adds elegance without compromising the minimalist aesthetic the clients prioritized. The wordmark was developed in both light and dark versions, ensuring flexibility across future applications and maintaining a consistent and cohesive visual identity.
4. 2024 Syrah Label Specifications
We then turned our attention to the technical requirements of the wine label, ensuring the design adhered to TTB regulations governing mandatory label information. Every required element, including the brand name, appellation, varietal, alcohol content, and government warning, was carefully placed and sized to meet compliance standards without disrupting the clean, minimalist aesthetic. Particular care was given to fine-tuning the back label body copy, honoring Bill's emphasis on keeping the language neutral and free of flavor descriptors, letting the wine speak for itself.
5. Final Packaging Mockups
To bring the design to life, we partnered with a local screen printing company in San Luis Obispo to produce sample bottles showcasing the finished label. Seeing the design translated onto glass for the first time was thrilling and surreal, and the choice to use screen printing with gold foil over a traditional paper label was a risk, but one that paid off entirely, giving the bottle a tactile, luxurious quality that a paper label simply could not achieve. The final product felt like a true reflection of everything Bill and Becky had envisioned, and proof that the right material and production choices can really elevate a brand just as much as the design itself.
Reflection
Although this project was completed as part of a class, working with a real client like Ballard Village Winery made it one of the most meaningful and formative experiences of my design career. Bill and Becky's passion for their brand was impossible not to feel, and it pushed me to treat every detail, hesitation, and round of feedback with the same care and intention they brought to their winery. This project went beyond designing a logo or a label, but understanding a family's story and finding the visual language to tell it, from their voice and tone down to the tactile experience of a screen-printed bottle. This project made me fall in love with the idea of being the vehicle that brings a client's vision to life, and the pride I feel in what we created for Ballard Village Winery is something I will carry into every project in the future.
